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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What heresy did Richard Wright commit, in Gilroy's account?
(a) Saying that blacks really were inferior to whites, in certain cases.
(b) Saying that history would repeat itself with slavery.
(c) Saying that black liberation was impossible, because the self is an endless war against itself.
(d) Saying that blacks shared responsibility for their situation.

2. How did Richard Wright want to present blacks in his books?
(a) As victims of white power.
(b) As collaborators in their own oppression.
(c) As something other than victims.
(d) As agents in the oppression of others.

3. What does Gilroy say is wrong with contemporary criticism of African-American literature?
(a) Relativism.
(b) Uncritical acceptance of all things primitive.
(c) Essentialism.
(d) Over-polarized vocabulary.

4. What kinds of stories does Gilroy say dominate black popular culture?
(a) Freedom and its costs.
(b) Justice and its consequences.
(c) Love and loss.
(d) Suffering and revenge.

5. What are blacks asked to remember instead of slavery?
(a) Their salvation from tribal existence.
(b) Their ongoing cultural pride.
(c) The benefits of Western progress.
(d) Black civilization.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Richard Wright say was the core of modernization?

2. Why would blacks be urged to forget slavery?

3. What does Gilroy predict will be the fault line issues for the twenty-first century?

4. When did Richard Wright believe the western consciousness began to break down according to Gilroy?

5. What does Gilroy say blacks used to unify themselves?

Short Essay Questions

1. What idea was undermined, in Richard Wright's mind, by the violence of modern American culture?

2. What are the three modes of thinking, seeing and being which DuBois says are the basis of double consciousness?

3. What tension did politics create in black culture?

4. What did DuBois conclude from his observations of black culture?

5. What origin legitimized Richard Wright in readers' eyes?

6. What, in Gilroy's account, was Richard Wright's thinking about racial identity?

7. Describe the pan-Africanism movement which Richard Wright was part of.

8. How does Gilroy say DuBois described black music?

9. What was James Weldon Johnson's contribution to Gilroy's book?

10. What view of the black Atlantic does Paul Gilroy leave us with at the end of the book?

(see the answer keys)

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